An Unfamiliar Face
I wrote this piece a while back, maybe a year or two into my sobriety journey, and for reasons I can’t really explain, I never felt comfortable posting it. That is, until now.
My eye’s follow the steam streaming from my coffee. I watch those opaque plumes dance in the morning air. They leave my gaze hovering in the middle distance, somewhere beyond my balcony. I don’t know how long passes, but it seems, no sooner has the steam disappeared before a spritely young woman floats into view.
She sports a white cap that is trailed by her ponytail, a noticeably sweaty singlet that has the word ‘NIKE’ plastered on the front, and a pair of those black tights that are all the rage within the yoga community. She is walking rather briskly. To where I don’t know. As quickly as the steam escaped my vision so too, does she. Lost behind the wall that obstructs my balconies view of the street.
Staring down at my coffee, I take my first sip. For an addict in recovery, the first coffee of the day is as close as I get to those euphoric hits I used to so desperately chase. It’s a strange thing being sober, after spending so much of your life high. Everything has an unfamiliar twinge to it. It’s not quite bad, but it’s not quite normal either. It’s like getting used to walking on land again after spending years at sea. You feel unsure of each step you take. Unsure of how you’re going to stay clean. Unsure of what you’re going to do now. And unsure of who you are without the drugs.
Putting down my coffee, I see another stranger on the street. He is an older fellow, at least seventy. He is dressed in a pair of loosely fitted grey sweatpants and a red Flanno with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The hair on his head has the scraggly unkept look of someone who gave up on grooming a long time ago. Plodding along with the assistance of one of those aluminium walking frames he radiates a hard-earned contentment. The wall that obstructs my view takes longer to close in on this old chap, but soon enough, he too, escapes my vision.
I see a lot of strangers from my balcony. They pour out of buses, appear from side streets, or zoom by veiled behind car windows. All of them a sea of unfamiliar faces. I don’t know what they hope for. I don’t know who they love. I don’t know them, and they don’t know me. Like steam disappearing into the morning air, they are as opaque to me, as I am to myself.
Emerging from addiction means renegotiating how you see the world and how you see yourself in it; I love that this places you in that world with a newly attentive eye observing others and considering their mysteries alongside your new own. It reminded me of “The Fog” but from a slightly different point in time. Whereas in that piece, you wrote
“I mean, in some strange way, it feels as though a part of me is still lost in there.”
here you express awareness of the mystery of that new self rather than focusing on a feeling of displacement. This felt very optimistic to me, especially that line about the coffee being a new euphoric high. It’s a sign of progress.
I too am glad you shared this.
"I don’t know what they hope for". Such a poignant line, Michael.